Someone Else
by Reichenbach
Summary: Catwoman and Batman have a difficult conversation.


I apologize PROFUSELY for this fic. It is highly fangrrl of me, and for that I am ashamed. After watching the BoP preview like six times, and reading the synopsis of the pilot… THIS came out. Please don't kill me.  
  
As always, I don't own.  
  
Someone Else  
  
**  
  
Beneath the hazy summer moonlight, two dark figures paused in tense repose atop a nameless apartment building. Initially off-put, the larger of the two stood frozen, searching for the reason of the rejection of his advance.  
  
Leaning against the roof's ledge, Catwoman permitted her metal claws to graze lazily against the cement, making a soft scraping sound. She tilted her head slightly, then went in for the kill. "There's Someone else," she explained coolly.  
  
"Someone else," Batman replied with mild disbelief.  
  
"Is that so hard to think of?"  
  
Batman failed to respond, simply because it was so difficult to comprehend. "We… you and I…" As happened so often in his life, he was at a loss for words. He reached a gloved hand out to her, searching for some guidance or explanation. This liaison had gone on, off and on, for so long, it seemed both secure and natural. Discovering that it was not… was unsettling.  
  
"You what? Thought we'd be together forever? Just because we're the same?" The temptation was to mock him, and it would have been easy too. He was not a man who revealed his emotions easily, and the slightest twist would snap him. She also knew that he would not believe her sincerity if she tiled her head back and laughed as she was tempted to do.  
  
His hand dropped to his side, his cape closing in around him. The way he pulled it around him when he was thinking, or unsure… it still endeared her to him.  
  
"Ba—Bruce," Catwoman began patently. She removed the glove from her right hand, and slid her fingers beneath her mask. Pulling it back slowly, she let it fall. The wind caught it, carrying it beyond the roof top, letting it drift slowly to the street below. "I won't say that it was all games, because it wasn't. You gave me something good. YOU are the reason for the changes in my life. But… I need to give this up."  
  
"This?" Batman asked, his voice still stony and cold. "Or us."  
  
"All of this," she explained patiently. "Roof tops. The chase… everyone else."  
  
Batman looked down. He knew who "everyone else" was. It wasn't Gotham society. She'd had enough of that last spring, and officially, Bruce and Selena had parted ways. She was talking of the seedier element of the city. "What can I do," he asked, his voice a dry, pleading whisper.  
  
"Just let me go," she offered gently.  
  
"What we have—had…"  
  
Her bare hand pressed against his thin, somber lips. "Don't. It was good. Better than good. But… I need something normal. And… I've found someone who can give me that. No high society. No rooftops."  
  
Again, Batman couldn't move, but this time, he was unable to breathe as well. There was nothing he could say to that, no obvious way to fix such a huge breach.  
  
"You've given me a lot," she said honestly. "I don't regret it. And I hope you wont either." Her fingers fell away from his lips, and she took a step back. "Don't… hole yourself up too badly. Think back fondly." Sitting on the ledge, she gracefully swung her legs over, and let herself fall.  
  
Batman didn't bother to look over the edge. She'd be back inside her apartment before he could. And there was one thing nagging at him, making him physically unable to react—she was letting him down gently. She wasn't trying to spare his feelings because she was grateful, but because she genuinely cared.  
  
Instinct made him want to go down there—to plead to the fact that she still obviously had feeling for him, but he didn't. Turning away, he shot a line to another building and took off. Because it felt so wrong to leave without a fight, he knew it was the right thing to do.  
  
* * *  
  
Closing the window behind her, Selena clenched her eyes shut for a moment, wondering if she'd done the right thing.  
  
"Well, Miss Kitty," she stated finally. "That went remarkably well. If destroying one's life can go well." Reaching behind her, she craned her arm to unzipper her costume. Usually, she had help. Tearing the tight black material from her flesh, she stripped it the rest of the way off, then threw it across the room.  
  
It was wholly necessary, and for the best, she told herself. Nothing was ever MORE necessary…  
  
She still felt like she was going to die.  
  
The pains came especially hard when she thought of how well he'd taken it. No fighting, not even a protest. She hadn't deserved that kind of cooperation in ruining everyone's life, for the sake of saving it.  
  
Finding her robe, she pulled it around her, not bothering to tie the belt. She curled up on the tan love seat, contemplating what a complicated, sordid mess her life had become.  
  
Sensing their owner's unrest, three of her cats, Miss Kitty among them, climbed onto the sofa with her. Miss Kitty rubbed her gray head against Selena's midsection, anxiously wishing to assuage her mistress' troubled spirit.  
  
"See, you know," Selena moaned miserably. "And he doesn't. And now we have to leave." She'd made no arrangements for fleeing Gotham thus far, she hadn't thought beyond telling Him that there was 'someone else'. There was—but not in the way he thought.  
  
As little as she wanted to leave, as little as she wanted to let this life slip away from her, she had to. Remaining here… with what she now possessed… was far too dangerous. More dangerous than anything she'd ever stolen was something she'd created. She and Him.  
  
And if the wrong people knew…  
  
Resolve washing over her again, she rose and pulled opened her closet, trying to think of what she could take—what would last over the course of the coming months. Few things made the grade.  
  
Perhaps she could return some day. Gotham was her home, and despite her protests to the contrary, there was a certain warmth brought to her heart when she saw a flittering of cape or the moving of a shadow in the night.  
  
She wanted to some day tell him.  
  
Clothes were shoved carelessly into a canvas satchel as she began searching the room for other things of immediate importance. Indecision wracking her, she decided to leave everything. A window was left opened for the strays to leave, and her few favorite felines trailed behind her, a question painted across each of their features.  
  
Selena looked back, knowing she always would, then closed the door and left so many things behind, for the sake of another future.  
  
THE END 


End file.
